Follow Blog via Email

Blogs I Follow

I'm a writer, living in Bristol in the UK. I've had a handful of short stories published but I'm still working on that Holy Grail for fiction writers- securing a literary agent. So, if you're an agent or have an Auntie, Uncle, second cousin, best friend who is one...

Follow me on Twitter

Exploring fictional worlds in a flash

What Pegman Saw: Lost, found, stolen

We were led along a narrow lane into the backyard of a house. A hosepipe coiled round the base of a banyan tree – emerald green and dusty – an equally dusty tortoiseshell cat coiled on a nearby garden chair.

The gallery was a wooden construction built onto the back of the house, the roof glass, letting in any dappled light that escaped the clutches of the banyan.

Sonny handed his kyats over to the elderly artist and strode in. I watched the twitch of his shoulders through his sweat-soaked shirt as he moved from one image to the next. The trip had been good for us. Time to heal, learn how to be a couple again, not a family.

I like the way the story, at first, reads like a couple’s frivolous getaway from the stresses of life with children. This leads to the assumption that the children have been left safe at home in the care of some competent person. Suddenly, your story turns into a grieving couple’s search, for an explanation to the mysterious premature death of their beloved child. This story has legs!

That’s a really interesting question, Dale. I imagined the encounter accidental (at least on the part of the parents) but there could be some connection there already. Thank you once more for your support and kind comment

Brilliant, as always. Your judgement is unerring. “Time to heal, learn how to be a couple again, not a family.” Perfect. The warning of what was to come felt like a kindness to your readers, but nothing could have softened the blow of that tragic closing line. We are puppets in your hands, Lynn. You tickle my masochistic side – I don’t know whether I’d be overjoyed, or disappointed, if you flashed a happy ending. 🙂

Haha! I’m not good at happy endings, it’s true. Though all my novel ideas up to now have happy endings. I just couldn’t take readers through so many thousand words only to kill off a protagonist – it feels too harsh 🙂 . Thank you so much, Jane